Their latest project is another gritty – and sometimes harrowing – production about how the long-forgotten past can impact and erupt into the present, and what happens when it does.

What is The Virtues about?

The Virtues is about a man named Joseph (Stephen Graham), a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon when his ex-girlfriend and young son leave him to move to Australia.

After going on a bender, he then returns to Ireland to meet up with his long-lost sister, Anna. But a traumatic experience from his past rears its head again and Joseph is left struggling to confront it – and seeks the truths and redemption for the horrors of his childhood.

Joseph (Stephen Graham) returns to Ireland in this story of the repressed past and revenge (Photo: Channel 4)

Where is it filmed?

Most interiors were shot in Sheffield with location work in Belfast, Birkenhead and the Liverpool to Belfast ferry. Unusually, shooting the scenes was done in chronological in order to maintain flexibility with changing storylines – apparently the part improvised drama didn’t have an ending until episode four was filmed.

Liverpool and Birkenhead

The action starts in Sheffield, where Joseph lives. He goes for dinner with his ex-partner and the realisation kicks in that his son is leaving to move to Australia and he heads to the local pub for a major session with complete strangers.

The next day, hungover and ashamed, he then boards the boat from Birkenhead docks over to Belfast and further scenes were shot here.

Sheffield

As the production company, Warp Films, are based in Sheffield, a lot of the interiors were filmed in the city, and the production team said they set up camp in an old, disused school that the actors could also use as rehearsal rooms.

A true story?

Shane Meadows revealed that writing the series helped him come to terms with being sexually assaulted 40 years ago.

“Fundamentally, when I discovered this thing,” said Meadows at The Virtues’ premiere screening, “I went into a place of trying to track down the people that had done it.”

“But I knew if I confronted him, if at any stage in that conversation he smirked at me, I was probably going to jump over the table and bite something off his face.”

“All I wanted was to be able to sit down with this guy, via Stephen Graham,” he told The Guardian.

“I’m not scared or ashamed any more. Plenty of people have been through far worse and they’ve told their stories. What happened to me is the reason the series exists.”

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